The Beaumont Journal, September 17, 1881, reported that McCarty and Ridley were building a sawmill at Kountze. By the next year, McCarty had moved north to become the first sawmiller and postmaster at Hillister. David J. Williams, Sr., owned the mill by 1886. The hurricane of October 12, 1886, destroyed the mill; it was not rebuilt. The hurricane of 1886 wreaked disaster throughout the lower end of East Texas. The communities of Sabine Pass, Texas, and Johnson's Bayou, Louisiana, were completely leveled. Almost two hundred people drowned in the two communities. Williams relocated his sawmilling activity at Summit.